Monday, May 27, 2013

Moneyball

Tonight is the first game of the Subway Series between the first place NY Yankees and the NY Mets. It's a lovely spring day, and Memorial Day to boot. What could possibly be wrong with this?

Well, the announcers on TV are ignoring the fact that the area between first and third base, around home plate, the most highly prized and most expensive seats available for sale, are freakishly bereft of fans. Row upon row of empty blue seats that in the past would have been jam packed with rabid NY baseball partisans.

These are the most expensive seats, as stated, but in this new era of grotesquely high priced "premium" seats, baseball, that most blue collar of sports, the "National Pastime", has finally succeeded in pricing out the backbone of support, the middle class fans.

The stadium is loaded with fans, to be clear. but the best seats are empty. They are simply beyond the reach of common everyday people.

High priced ballplayers have been blamed by team owners for years for lack of loyalty to fans, by asserting their union bargained free agent rights. In a world gone mad, it's impossible to justify the astronomical salaries of professional athletes in the larger scheme of things. But let's be clear about one thing. The astounding sums of money that these teams and leagues receive from their lucrative television contracts assures these owners of turning a profit before the first ticket is ever sold.

It's just a case of unquenchable greed that has caused the situation we now find ourselves in.

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What's a Psychic Infection?

The spread of psychic effects or influences on others on a small scale, as in folie a deux, or on a large scale, as in the dance and witch manias of the Middle Ages or the spread of hysteria or panic in a crowd.*